These Dark Desires
by the ticking clock
Summary: Everyone has nightmares, after all. The Avengers have more than most.


Steve is flying a plane.

His hands are clenching the controls so tightly his knuckles are white and his palms are sweating and slipping. He readjusts his grip.

"Cap, you okay?" Tony's voice over the intercom. Steady. Dependable.

Steve swallows. "Yeah, I'm fine. This is fine."

It is anything but fine. The ocean is endless and blue and cold below him, stretching on for miles and miles. The plane shudders, and Steve shakes his head furiously.

This is not 1943.

"Cap?"

"Still fine."

This is not 1943.

The sun is out and warm and the ocean is a clear, summer blue. He is not going to freeze.

"Cap, you're gonna have to dive. Go low. Do you copy?"

"I copy."

Slowly, he angles the nose of the plane down.

This is not 1943.

His breath is coming faster now, and the blue is rushing towards him. It blurs into a mass of ocean and cold and he wants to close his eyes, but he can't.

Tony is screaming in his ear but Steve can't understand a word he is saying, and it is all just a mess of noise and-

and Steve wakes up.

His mind is jerked out of the dream and into the present with force, and he sits up, gasping for breath.

"Easy, there, Cap."

Pressing his clenched fists to his eyes, Steve looks to his left.

Tony is crouched down next to the couch. They are in the living room on the third floor of the Stark Tower. They'd been having a movie night, but the other Avengers must have retired to their separate rooms. It's only Steve and Iron Man.

"Sorry," Steve mutters, embarrassed. He clears his throat. "Did I, um, did I wake you?"

Tony shakes his head, his mouth making the shape of a smile that does not quite reach his hollow eyes. "Nah, you didn't. I don't sleep."

* * *

><p>Tony Stark is Iron Man.<p>

He has been Iron Man for quite a long time, and he has made his peace with it. It did not stop the nightmares.

Sometimes he dreams that Pepper is falling through the wormhole with him, and they are clinging to each other but her hand is torn from his grasp and the last thing he hears is her screams-

Sometimes he dreams that his heart has stopped and he's choking and crying and dying, and the Avengers stand around him with silent faces, watching. Because who in the world needs Tony Stark? They need his machines. They need JARVIS. But do they really need him, damaged, broken, Tony who never sleeps because he's terrified to close his eyes, who masks his insecurities behind wealth and an ego, who thinks only of himself because to think that his loved ones might be in danger paralyzes him.

He thinks these thoughts at night, alone in the dark, even with Pepper's warm arm encircling his side and her lips a soothing balm against the bruises.

* * *

><p>Clint dreams of falling.<p>

He dreams that he's standing on the edge of a building, muscles burning with the familiar ache as he pulls his arm, the soft tickle of a feather brushing his cheek, sighting along the shaft of an arrow. The sky is always gray in his dreams. The city blends in with it-endless in its perpetual gray-ness.

And then he senses something behind him-the whisper of a footstep-and turns, letting the arrow fly.

Natasha stares first at the arrow, then at the red (blood?) then up at him. She screams, and Clint falls.

The wind hisses past his ears in a horrible kind of scream, piercing and sharp, even to his deaf ears. There's no one to catch him and nothing to hold on to. He's falling and slowly he sees Nat sink to her knees at the roof's edge. Her gaze catches his, holds.

He slams into the pavement.

"Clint?" Natasha's voice. He blinks, turns on his side, whispers her name.

"Be still, hawkling," Loki. Malicious, delightful, addicting. "I'm here. All is well." The trickster's arms encircle Clint's waist, pulling him close.

Clint tries to struggle, but the god combs fingers through his hair, crooning, and against his will, Clint relaxes. Loki's lips are close to his ear, "Let it all go, hawkling," he breath smells like honey. And then he is entirely to close, and they are holding each other and-

Clint wakes up sweating.

Natasha is awake next to him. He knows, because she does not tense or start when he sits up, but reaches for his shoulder. "Clint."

"I'm fine, Tasha." The dream is still there, echoing in his mind with the lingering taste of honey and metallic blood, "I just need a minute."

"Okay," she says easily. The bed squeaks as she pulls her knees up into her chest, giving him space.

He wants to look at her. He wants to catch her face up in his hands and look into her eyes and feel like he's coming home. He wants her to kiss him until his lips hurt and he can't breathe. But he knows now that with the dream so close, clinging to his every move like a second skin, those things will be tainted.

After a few minutes of quiet she asks, "You okay?"

It's a rhetorical question, but he answers anyway, "No."

There is a smile in her voice. "Yeah," she uncurls from her clenched ball in the corner, his response an unspoken permission to hold. Her arms wrap around his shoulders, chin resting in the hollow of his collarbone. She presses a kiss to his neck and rocks him. He closes his eyes.

"Me either," she whispers.

* * *

><p>Natasha has been many people.<p>

She doesn't remember all of her aliases, there's really no point. She's moved on, taken new assignment, left the past behind her.

At least during the day.

She dreams that she's standing, naked and raw and exposed, on a podium in front of the world. Her ledger is stamped out across newspapers, tv's, billboards. The Fire. DC. Budepast.

She's covered in red, literally, blood is welling up under her skin in gigantic bruises and bursting to the surface-oozing out in quick slashes and crevices. Her other lives, the Natasha's she's buried, come up to her one by one and whisper, "you killed me," in her ear. One stays and traps her against the wall. Her face is cold and emotionless and empty, and she presses a knife to Natasha's throat.

"Please," Natasha whispers. _Please, please don't do this, don't do this, don't-_

"Those were his last words," The other Natasha says. Her voice is like ice, the bite of the knife colder still, "you have no right to them." Then the knife slices across her throat like a smile, and she is choking on red-

Natasha wakes up silently.

Clint is sleeping next to her, twitching a little, the way he does when he's dreaming. She runs a hand through his tousled hair, but he doesn't wake up.

Sighing, she stretches until her shoulders pop back into place and she can breathe easier. She closes her eyes and whispers, "you're going to be fine. It was only a dream," exactly two hundred and fifty times.

She says it until she can believe it.

Then she wraps her arms around Clint and listens to his heart, and the quiet of the night.

* * *

><p>Bruce does not dream often.<p>

His sleep is the long, deep rest of the exhausted. Dreams do not find him so easily. But when they do, they are about The Other Guy.

There is not much to the dreams. Running. Hiding. Jumping. Crashing through glass so it stings his knuckles, so he can feel something other than bitter, vicious anger. Waking up surrounded by blood, the broken bodies of Coulson, Tony, Natasha, Thor and Steve lying around him. His horror as he realizes-

Bruce wakes up suddenly. Tony is poking him with a pipet.

"Ah, the beast awakes!" the other man crows. Bruce glares at him. There are dark circles under Tony's eyes, but Bruce has learned from experience that badgering Tony about his poor life choices did not accomplish much of anything, so he says, "very funny."

"That's me," Tony says, handing him a fresh cup of coffee, "ready to crack this thing?"

Bruce spins a screen towards himself and types in the access code. "You haven't already?"

"Almost there," Tony shrugs, "but I need your genius advice."

Bruce smiles.

* * *

><p>Thor dreams of Loki.<p>

They are standing at the edge of the abyss. Loki's silent, staring down into the darkness. His eyes are cold and malicious and a stranger's.

"Brother," Thor says, "please don't do this."

Loki's laugh is cracked and furious and _wrong, _"You haven't given me much of a choice, Thor."

"But-"

"You know you've done everything that I accuse you of, brother. Some part of you ," Loki laughs again. "you great, stupid oaf. You can fool the others, but you can never fool me. I'm the god of lies, you imbecile. You deny and deny that you shoved me aside because you are ashamed of it."

"No," Thor protests, and the word sounds false even on his own tongue. "No, please Loki, please don't do this, we can-"

His little brother spins on his heel and pulls a knife. Thor backs up.

Loki's laughing. It's high and wild and so very far from human. He holds the weapon up to his throat. His skin is bone white, and the blade gleams like silver fire in Thor's eyes. He screams.

Loki's still laughing, even as he draws the knife across his throat, even when it chokes off into a gurgle, even as he spreads his arms and steps out into the darkness.

Thor wakes up with wet cheeks and a sore throat. Sighing, he wipes his eyes and goes to the window to watch the sun rise. He's seen civilizations rise and fall, he's saved the world, and his biggest fear is his little brother. It's a little ironic.

But everyone has nightmares, after all.


End file.
